The National Education Policy, 2019

The Committee under the chairmanship of Dr.. Kasturirangan
submitted its Draft National Education Policy on March 31, 2019. This Committee
was constituted by the Ministry of Human Resource Development in June, 2017.

Vision:

• The National Education Policy, 2019 envisions an “India
  centred” education system that contributes directly to transforming our
  nation sustainably into an equitable and vibrant knowledge society, by
  providing high quality education to all.
• In a gist, this report proposes a policy which addresses the
  main challenges of: access, equity,
  quality, affordability and
  accountability which is faced by our current education system.

Key recommendations of the Policy:

• The Ministry of Human Resource Development (HRD) is to be renamed as Ministry of Education. This brings “Education” into focus.
• It increases focus on early childhood care, changing our current examination system, providing training of teachers and restructuring our education framework.
• For comprehensively and holistically implementing the Policy, it seeks to set up a National Education Commission or Rashtriya Shiksha Aayog as an apex body for education, to be headed by the Prime Minister. This would ensure necessary cohesion and synergy between the multiple dimensions of education in our country by evaluating and revising the current education system.
• This draft Policy extends the ambit of the Right to Education Act to include early childhood education and secondary school education. This means the coverage of the Act is extended to all children between ages of three to eighteen years and not merely till the age of fourteen.
• The policy recommends that multiple public schools should be brought together to form a school complex. This strategy would lead to efficient sharing of material and human resources including infrastructure and trained teachers, wider range of classes and opportunities for students and the ability of students for different ages to travel and attend the same school.
• It introduces a new developmentally appropriate curriculum and pedagogical system for school education: 5+3+3+4 design which comprises of:
• five years of foundational stage, three years of preparatory stage, three years of middle stage and four years of secondary stage. The focus would be on fun and interactive classrooms at all stages, encouraging questions with creative and collaborative activities leading to more experiential learning.

• One of the major focus of the Policy is Early Childhood Care
  and Education through a two-part curriculum: (i) guidelines for up to
  three-year-old children (for parents and teachers) (ii) educational framework
  for three to eight year old children.
• For teaching training, the existing B.Ed programme is to be
  replaced by a four year integrated B.Ed programme that combines high quality
  content, practical training and pedagogy.
• The draft also recommends that teachers should be deployed
  with a particular school for at least a period of five to seven years including
  disciplinary programs and professional development programs to improve the
  quality of teachers.
• To face the challenge of a large number of students falling
  behind in classes due to not understanding the language, it recommends that the
  medium of instruction must be either the home language/ mother tongue/ local
  language till grade five and preferable till grade eight. It strongly
  emphasizes on promotion of Indian and classical languages by setting up three
  new National Institutes for Pali, Persian and Prakrit.
• It proposes continuity of the three language formula which
  provided for the study of “Hindi, English and modern Indian language
  (preferably one of the southern languages) in Hindi speaking states and Hindi,
  English, and the Regional language in the non-Hindi speaking states”
• Currently, higher education institutions can be only set up
  by Parliament of State legislatures. The draft policy proposes setting up the
  National Higher Education Regulatory Authority (NHERA), which will be the sole
  regulator for higher education.  National
  Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) Medical Council of India (MCI), Bar
  Council of India (BCI) and All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE)
  are to be Professional Standard Setting Bodies and set standards for practice
  of the respective professions.
• In its new role as given in the draft policy, National
  Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) shall function as the top level
  accreditor, issuing licensed to different accreditation institutions. It sets a
  goal of accrediting all higher educational institutions by 2030. 
• Keeping in mind that Research and Innovation are essential
  for growth and sustaining a large economy, a National Research Foundation (NRF)
  shall be established. The NRF will grant competitive funding for research
  proposals, facilitate research at academic institutions, act as a liaison among
  researchers and recognize outstanding research and progress achieved via NRF
  funding/mentoring across subjects, through prizes and special seminars
  recognizing the work of the researchers.
• It recommends several school exam reforms, one of them being
  State Census examinations in Class three, five and eight. This strategy would
  facilitate tracking of students’ progress throughout their education. Board
  examinations will be restructured to test core skills, concepts, high order
  capacities in range of required subjects and elective subjects of the students’
  choice.
• Another major highlight is the revamp of higher educational
  institutions which will be restructured into three major heads: (i) research
  universities focusing equally on research and teaching (ii) teaching
  universities, with a primary focus on teaching (iii) colleges focusing only on
  teaching at undergraduate levels. Thus, this policy places highest emphasis on
  moving towards a higher educational system consisting of large
  multidisciplinary universities and colleges.
• Curriculum of the Undergraduate programmes shall be
  redesigned to include: (i) a common core curriculum and (ii) one/two areas of
  specialization. Students will be required to choose and area of specialization
  as a “major” and an optional area as a “minor”.
• Vocational courses in addition to traditional academic
  courses in grades nine to twelve. For this purpose, a National Committee for
  Vocational Education shall be set up along with a separate fund for integration
  of vocational education into educational institutions.
• In addition to the above, the Committee
  observed that technology plays a major role in our current education system and
  thus, it recommends National Mission on Education through information
  and communication technology. The National Educational Technology Forum shall
  be a platform for free exchange of ideas on the use of technology to improve
  learning, assessment, planning and administration.

Major Drawbacks:

• All though the report emphasizes inclusive education and
  caters to girls, Muslims, urban, poor, tribal, and transgender children, the
  challenges of instituting equal and quality education for all i.e.
  “equality of education opportunity” has not been addressed at all.
• The draft lacks operational details and does not offer
  insights into how the policy will be funded. It must be ensured that this
  policy does not face litigation, state resistance, and any operational
  challenges on the ground.
• Expanding coverage under the RTE Act to include childhood
  and secondary education is a highlight of the policy, however this should be
  introduced gradually. One must consider the teacher vacancies as well as the
  quality of infrastructure, and amend the Act after a while.
• Setting up of the Rashtriya Shiksha Aayog is crucial but
  fraught with many challenges in relation to administration. Bringing medical,
  agricultural and legal education under one umbrella is likely to be a big
  challenge.
• The issue of language must be handled sensitively in view of
  emotional overtones. Protests are often made without understanding the spirit
  of the text. Within a day, the draft’s proposal of the three language system
  has made Hindi the centre of controversy. It was seen as move to impose Hindi
  on non-Hindi states.
• Sexual education is an important issue that was properly
  dealt with in the draft policy. It talks about including sexual education in
  secondary education however, neither mechanisms of redressal nor complaint are
  created for schools. Although this policy has given space for sexual education,
  it is still inadequate to deal with the issue of child abuse. It does not seem
  like the policy would allow such a curriculum for the younger grades, to allow
  them to understand the ideas of sexual abuse, physical issues and consent.
• Another prominent issue that has been addressed by the
  policy is the quality of education in the school but it does not deal with
  capacity building and training of the older teachers. It only emphasizes on
  plans of inculcating new teachers.

Conclusion:

The draft National Education Policy has drawbacks yet, The Kasturirangan Committee does deserve credit for proposing and delivering a nationally relevant and globally sensitive New Education Policy. It covers important areas like School Education, Higher Education, Transforming Education (by establishment of the Rashtriya Shiksha Aayog) and additional Focus Areas (including vocational education, languages and use of technology in education). It is a bold step for the progress of the Indian education system. Such a policy is the need of the hour to make India a knowledge superpower by equipping all the students in the country with necessary skills and knowledge and to ensure quality education, research and innovation.

Contributed By – Kulin Dave
Designation – Associate

King Stubb & Kasiva,
Advocates & Attorneys

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